


to the victor

by orphan_account



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Hunger Games Setting, M/M, Unhappy Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-19
Updated: 2018-02-19
Packaged: 2019-03-21 11:02:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,062
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13739502
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Nobody wins in the Games; the victor least of all, perhaps.





	to the victor

**Author's Note:**

> iiiiiii am so sorry

The tribute from District 4 saves his life. It’s a stupid thing to do, because saving _anyone_ is stupid in the arena, but Jon’s grateful. He doesn’t want to die.

(he is going to, he knows, because he’s weak and gangly, and he’s smart but not that smart)

“Tim,” the tribute from District 4 tells him. He’s taller than Jon, and more muscular, and there’s a smear of blood across his face from where he’d wiped a hand across it after he—

Well. He saved Jon from another tribute. Three of them were in that clearing and only him and Tim are walking out.

Jon introduces himself in return, and asks why Tim had saved him, because he has to at least know. Tim shrugs, an easy motion that looks practiced. Jon wonders if he was easy-going before, or if it’s something he’s been practicing for the arena, for the sponsors. Wonders how long he can keep it up, either way.

“She killed the girl from my district,” he tells Jon, and underneath the act he looks haunted. “Sasha. She didn’t— it wasn’t pretty. She played with her, and I couldn’t save her.”

None of this is pretty, but Jon will give that Tim hadn’t played with the other tribute. It had been quick and decisive, and after an hour (more?) of being hunted through the forest himself, Jon can’t exactly bring himself to mourn the girl. So he just nods and follows along with Tim when Tim offers a team-up, and tries not to think too much about it. To think too much about any of this.

(if he does, he’ll break down, and that’s as good as tossing himself to one of the other tributes)

* * *

How the boy from District 8 has survived this long alone is a mystery to Jon, and he’s pretty sure it’s a mystery to Tim as well. Martin is soft-cheeked and young-looking, and he’s also, somehow, more than a year older than Jon.

“The Reaping was only a month before my nineteenth birthday,” he tells them both, and even manages to sound like he _doesn’t_ think that’s the most unfair thing in the world. Maybe he doesn’t, though - he seems like the type to just be glad that him being here means someone else isn’t.

He’s surprisingly hardy, as it turns out, which explains how he’s gotten by for this long. He’s better at avoiding the other tributes than fighting, but when the girl from District 9 - Prentiss, Jon thinks her name was - corners Jon while Tim is out searching for water, Martin manages to get behind her and cut her throat as though he does it every day. He lays her down carefully afterwards, closes her eyes and _apologizes_ to her corpse, and Jon thinks it might be best if Martin does die and hates himself for the thought.

(no one that kind should ever have to do this once, let alone enough to win)

* * *

The girl from District 12 burns down the forest with them in it, and herself too. Jon can’t tell if she’d actually had some plan to escape, or if she’d just decided to go out in the flashiest way possible. From what he remembers of her in the lead-up to the arena, either could be possible.

“You go,” Tim tells them. “I’ll make sure she doesn’t follow you. I’ll find you soon.”

He doesn’t find them. Jon and Martin huddle in a cave and wait, and wait, and Martin keeps trying to tell Jon that he’s sure Tim will be there soon. That maybe they should check outside. That he’ll be there. They huddle, and they wait, and Martin checks outside periodically and Jon just hunches further and further in on himself because he just _knows_.

He knows, and he’s pretty sure Martin knows, and it’s not _fair_.

(when night comes and they show the fallen, Martin pulls him outside and they watch Tim’s face flash up and neither of them says a word)

* * *

Jon has lost count of how many of them are left, but he knows it’s not many. Knows that, if someone else doesn’t get there first, it’s going to come down to the point where it’s just Jon and Martin and one of them has to die.

Martin has to know that too, and Jon suspects that’s why Martin wakes him up during the night and kisses him, hard.

“Jon?” Martin says when he pulls back, and when Jon nods in the darkness, he goes on, “I wish we could have met in a better way. But— but I’m glad we did meet, even if it had to be like this.”

He curls his face into Jon’s shoulder, and there are tears wet against Jon’s skin and then Jon is crying too, clutching onto Martin as Martin clings to him. He doesn’t know what to say - doesn’t know if he can say any of this was worth it, doesn’t know if he can say it wasn’t - so he just holds Martin as tight as he can without it hurting.

He thinks maybe Martin is planning to leave, to make it easier. Jon won’t survive on his own, so it’ll be easier that way - maybe Martin will win and maybe he’ll lose, but he’ll do it away from Jon and that way maybe he won’t have to be the one to kill Jon. Jon thinks Martin could do it, if he has to. He hopes with all of his heart that something or someone else gets there first, because he doesn’t want to die but more than that he doesn’t want Martin to have to kill him.

They hold each other like that for what might be hours, and somewhere along the way Jon drifts off.

He’s woken by the sound of a cannon shot, and when he jerks up he’s alone in the cave. And there’s some part of him, somehow, that just _knows_. The same part of him that had known about Tim, probably.

He hadn’t lost count. He’d convinced himself that he must have, because if he’d counted right then they were the only ones left. And if they were the only ones left, and Martin hasn’t killed him, then—

(he finds Martin outside, his hands and lips stained with berry juice, and the part that hurts the most is that he’s smiling)


End file.
